Divorcing Jack (12 page)

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. A lot of people must have done that in that depressing room, lonely, miserable people. A ceiling which had once been cream was stained yellow with nicotine. When I moved, the bed squeaked. It wasn't the sort of establishment where the beds enjoyed a lot of nocturnal movement; the only thrashings that kept the neighbours awake were nightmare-fuelled.

I was booked in under the name of Paul Cook. He was the drummer in the Sex Pistols. I owed Parker twelve pounds for the room and another hundred pounds for the telephone I smashed to pieces in the bar in Bangor, plus my grateful thanks for getting me out of there before being beaten to a pulp by a couple of bouncers with an over-protective attitude to newfangled equipment . . .

There was a small black and white television in one corner of the room. The reception was poor. There was a brief interview with Margaret's next-door neighbour. Only the back of her head was shown out of fear for her safety.

She recalled her sleep being disturbed by a man screaming, 'You f 'n' move and I'll kill you.' She'd thought about calling the police but had fallen back asleep while thinking about it. A police inspector reiterated that a major manhunt was under way and the killer or killers would be apprehended, but said that he couldn't reveal if any specific lines of inquiry were being followed for operational reasons. They repeated the interview with Brinn I had heard on the radio earlier, and added to it condemnations from the other legitimate political parties of any importance, the Unionists, the Social Democrats and the Conservatives. Government restrictions stopped them broadcasting the actual voice of a Sinn Fein councillor, but his words were read out by the newsreader. He denounced the killings as sectarian but blamed them on the continued British presence in Ulster. The reporter, in a concise piece of supposition, suggested that it was an attempt by the paramilitaries to disrupt the elections.

No one mentioned my wife. It was early days for that yet. Patricia was dead. That much was obvious. Possibly her father. Possibly her mother. Parker had gotten enough sense out of me to find out exactly where her parents lived and had stopped at the first phone box we could find after escaping from the bar and phoned the police. He had spoken to them in a truly appalling Irish accent. They would be staking out the house now, fearful of an ambush. When they went in they would probably find it smashed up. There might be a body, or two, or three, but they wouldn't approach them until they had made sure they weren't booby-trapped.

I drifted off into a sweat-drenched sleep. Some time during the night I found myself walking along a dirt track in the deep south of the US. There was a huge black man painting the front of a small cottage a heavenly shade of blue. As I got closer I realized that it was Parker. When I reached his rickety garden gate he climbed down from the ladder and stood back to admire his work. I was about to apologise to him for my earlier unintentional comments about his receding hairline when I noticed that he had missed a spot or two of paint up in the top right-hand corner of the cottage.

'Bit of a bald spot there,' I said.

And before the full import of what I'd said dawned on me he drew a Samurai sword from within his overalls and lopped off my head with a single swipe.

I woke up in a yellowy room. The sun had penetrated the thin lace curtains and had combined with the ceiling to imbue it with a sick, jaundiced glow. I sat at the edge of the bed. I was still fully clothed. I looked at my hands. There was an almost imperceptible shake. I made tight fists of them, squeezing until my muscles ached and my fingernails had bitten into my palms. Then I said a prayer. It went: God bless Patricia. God bless Margaret. After a pause I added: God bless Parker.

It was 12.30.I had slept through breakfast. But there was no hunger, not even the welcoming rumble of a hangover, just a numbness like someone had removed my stomach during the night but the anaesthetic hadn't yet worn off.

There were no in-room facilities. There was a bathroom at the end of the corridor. As I approached it the door opened and a young man about my age emerged. His hair was shaggy from drying it without the benefit of a comb; he'd used henna on it, and that and his sharp features made him look fox-wily ... He was wearing a deep-blue suit; the top button of his white shirt was buttoned but he held a thin, crumpled-looking pink tie in his hand.

He looked up and apologized for nearly colliding with me, went to walk on and then turned back.

'Uh, mate, you wouldn't know how to tie a tie, would you?'

He held the tie up to me.

I shook my head. 'Sorry, mate, I can just about manage my shoes.'

He shook his head and laughed. 'I've been at this for half an hour. I've tried everything, but it's determined not to sit right. I nearly bloody hung myself at the last attempt. Sure you can do nothing for me?'

'I'll give it a go if you want, but I warn you your head may come off in the process.'

He put the tie around his neck and handed me both ends of it. He smelt clean and fresh and his eyes shone.

'What's the big occasion then?' I asked. He didn't look comfortable in the suit. It was contradictory clothing: old but seldom worn or new but out of fashion. The sort of suit a man would buy based on something he had spotted while trying to find the problem page in a three-year-old women's magazine in a dentist's surgery he was visiting to have an abscess drained.

'Meeting the wife for lunch. We split up about six weeks ago. She's had me living in this fuckin' dump ever since. I'm hoping we'll get back together.' Realizing perhaps that he had somehow compromised his manly pride, he added with a conspiratorial wink, 'I'm not that worried about her, but I really miss the record collection.'

I finished the tie as best I could. He thanked me profusely and walked off with something that looked like a contortionist's gay octopus friend knotted about his neck.

I showered and shaved and then returned to my room and spent the afternoon looking out at the traffic buzzing along the Malone Road. It had the reputation of being one of Northern Ireland's richest areas, but most of the real money had long since fled to the country, or fled the country itself for that matter. Most of the money and all of the brains were located in England now. I had palpably shown over the past few days that I had neither and was stuck here for good. That small yellow room, given a set of bars could be my prison cell. Home for eternity. Maybe I would be okay. I'd been there for hours already and I wasn't feeling claustrophobic at all.

During the afternoon the guesthouse owner made polite inquiries about my plans, as I was two hours past the checking-out time. I paid her for another night and she thanked me profusely and said she hoped my recuperation from the car crash would be without mishap. I began to feel that I'd been playing the car crash thing up a little too much. She said what a nice black man Parker was just before leaving the room.

Parker, the nice black man, had still not returned by tea time so I made my way downstairs to the dining room. There were three tables, each with four seats. My friend with the pink tie but now without the pink tie was sitting by himself at a table by the window and I sat down opposite him, taking care to sit with my elbow propping my head inward, away from any curious passers-by.

'AH right? How's it going?' He asked.

'Not bad, thanks. How about you? How'd your lunch go?'

He'd lost the suit as well. He wore a pair of black jeans and a black pullover with a little yacht motif over his left nipple. He shrugged. 'Okay, I suppose.' He looked a bit down in the mouth.

'But you're still here.'

'Yeah, well, you take these things slowly, you know?'

'Yeah.'

'It was quite nice really. There was no arguing, no cursing, no violence. The last time that happened she didn't turn up.'

'Sounds hopeful, anyway,' I said.

He made a bit of a face. 'I wouldn't go that far. She's seein' another fella . . .'

'Oh, I'm sorry, I. . .'

'Never worry about it. It doesn't bother me. I follow this philosophy where I don't allow anger or jealousy to cloud my thought processes. I picked it up in the East.'

'What, like in India or Nepal or something?'

'Nah, East Belfast. It's called the philosophy of who gives a fuck?' He said it straight-faced, but I could tell he was suppressing a cackle. I wondered what he would make of my marital troubles.

The guesthouse owner shuffled over and handed me a threadbare menu which told me what I was having rather than giving me a choice.

I ordered pork chops after a suitable minute of rumination. My friend ordered his. Rather perplexingly there was no boiled cabbage available, yet its aura hung over the dining room like a shroud.

'Paul Cook,' I said, reaching across to shake his hand.

'Lenny Morrison. Local?' He asked Ish.'

'You look like you've had a hard time.'

'Aye, the bruises are starting to go down, thank God. Car crash.'

'Jesus. You go through the window or something?'

'Nah, I was in the back seat. Headbutted the guy in front of me when we crashed.'

'Tough. You working?'

'On and off. Mechanic. In a garage. When they need me.'

'So I'll know who to bring the wagon to in the future?'

'Any time. What about you?'

'Civil servant. Same as most everyone else in this bloody country.' He laughed and then leant back from the table as his food was set down. As I moved back to allow the woman to set mine down I glanced across at the couple on my right. They looked to be in their sixties but may not have spoken since their thirties. They had the bluff red faces of country folk, he with exasperated wrinkles round his eyes that told of his annoyance at having to come up to the city to complete some farming transaction, she with the close-cut but still jagged white hair you get in a hill-farming community that has still not succumbed to the blue rinse. She was studying a knitting pattern set at the side of her plate, her meal half finished. He had cleared his plate and was intently studying an inside page of that evening's
Belfast Telegraph,
holding it up so that his wife could not see him. I was so intent on studying my neighbours that it was some moments before my eyes focused on the front page of the newspaper, and in particular on the picture of my wife. The headline read:
murder suspect missing after gun battle.

A shiver ran through me. Footsteps on the grave. I leant over to read the story but as I did the man pulled the front page back towards him and stared at me. I sat back and gave him a little grin. He folded the paper so that it made a neat square he could set down beside his plate. I felt like reaching over and ripping it away from him.

'Friendly soul, isn't he?' Lenny said quietly.

'Probably just looking at the pictures,' I replied, just a little too loud. The farmer's face went slightly redder and I could see he was staring a little too intently at the paper to be really taking anything in. His wife's eyes flicked up at him, darted across to me and a slight smirk appeared on her lips; she went back to studying her knitting pattern.

'I have a paper upstairs if you want one,' Lenny said.

We finished our meal and he took me up to his room. There were newspapers and magazines scattered everywhere and his clothes were strewn about the room.

'Sorry about the mess. Pauline used to look after everything. I never was house trained.'

I sat down on the edge of his bed while he rummaged down the other side, against the wall, finally emerging with a crumpled version of that evening's paper.

He handed it to me and said: 'Doing anything tonight? You don't fancy going out for a drink? This place is driving me up the walls.'

I would have loved a drink. A lot of drink. I shook my head. 'Sorry, mate, love to, but I'm waiting for someone. Another time, eh?'

I took the paper back to my room and smoothed the front page out on my bed.

The photo of Patricia had been taken from her parents' house and dated back to the days before we were married. Young, free, single and alive, nothing she could put a claim on that day. She looked very pretty. Beneath the broadsheet's fold there was a much smaller picture of me. It appeared to be a poor reproduction of the picture used to head my column in the
Evening News;
doubtless the
News
would have printed the original. Still, it could have been worse: my face didn't cover more than a single column, black and white and my nose had to be seen in three dimensions to be unappreciated. A caption beneath it read simply:
Police are also seeking journalist Daniel Starkey.

The news about Patricia had obviously just broken. With an exclusive tagged over it, it said that Patricia Starkey, who was being sought by police in connection with the McGarry double murder, had been abducted by person or persons unknown following a gun battle in Portstewart. Her parents were being treated for shock but were otherwise uninjured. She was described as a twenty-eight-year-old civil servant who had no known connection with paramilitary organizations nor a previous criminal record. 'She is the wife of Dan Starkey, a reporter and columnist on another Belfast newspaper whom police also wish to question.' There was a number of quotes from neighbours in Portstewart who had heard shots being fired and seen Patricia dragged screaming into a car, but nothing from her parents. There was no police substantiation on why they wanted to question her. Nothing, yet, about a love triangle. God, how they would have loved a love triangle. You never got love triangles in Northern Ireland, just endlessly repetitive murders which were written up to formula by bored reporters. Maybe if I'd worked at it I could have come up with a love rhombohedron. This reporter suggested that the abduction could be connected to a long-running feud between Protestant terror groups which had plagued the north-west of the Province over the past year. It recalled, helpfully, that previous abductions had resulted in the hooded corpses of the abductees being found several days later.